Hundreds of thousands of people cross San Francisco Bay each day. But as commuters zip through the BART tunnel or drive over the bridges, they probably don’t think about what the Bay looked like in the past — or what it will look like in the future. On Saturday, February 6, over 150 people attended the UCMP’s annual Short Course, Predicting the future of San Francisco Bay: Learning from history. Throughout the course’s five talks, they saw a very different view of San Francisco Bay.
A theme that emerged from the course was that San Francisco Bay is constantly changing. Doris Sloan, Adjunct Professor in Earth and Planetary Science at Berkeley and Curatorial Associate at the UCMP, spoke about the geologic processes that shape the Bay. For example, sea levels have fluctuated dramatically throughout the Bay’s history. In the past, sea levels were low enough to make the Bay a dry river valley — and were high enough to make San Francisco an island. UCMP Faculty Curator Jere Lipps talked about the Bay’s geology, too. He emphasized tectonic processes that are happening in the present day — and he brought his earthquake bucket. (If you live in a tectonically active area, please see below for more info on earthquake buckets!) The next speaker, Robin Grossinger of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, showed that geologic processes aren’t the only things that shape the bay. He compared fascinating old maps to recent aerial photos to show that humans are responsible for numerous changes to the shoreline over the past 200 years. Andrew Cohen, Director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions (CRAB), talked about the ecological history of the bay. It is important to know which organisms (and how many of them) lived in the Bay, as we make plans to restore it. And Will Travis, Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), talked about strategies for adapting to changes in the Bay that will occur in the future. Throughout the short course, it became clear that that San Francisco Bay has been changing since it first formed — and it will continue to change. At this point, we know a lot about the Bay — and we can use this knowledge as we plan for the future.
To learn more about the speakers, look at the agenda for the Short Course. The PowerPoint presentations will soon be available. And in a few weeks, videos of the presentations will be available on UC Berkeley’s YouTube channel, iTunes U, and webcast.berkeley.edu. Check back for the links!
** In the event of an earthquake, Jere won’t share the contents of his bucket with you – you need to put together your own earthquake preparedness kit! The website 72hours.org has a list of things you should include in your bucket. In addition to the items on the list, Jere suggests including a few other things that might just save your life: a wind-up radio/flashlight, a small one-burner propane stove, pillows, and gloves and kneepads for crawling around on broken glass and debris. If Haiti’s recent earthquake is any indication, it could be several days before emergency services are able to reach everyone; Jere recommends including a supply of food and water to last at least 7 days.